In the book The Joy Luck Club, the mother-daughter pair, Waverly and Lindo Jong, have a complicated relationship. Their issues that they have with one another are based on a lack communication and misunderstandings. Waverly is afraid of her mother because she feels as if Lindo wants to ruin her life. Waverly states “In her hands, I always became the pawn. I could only run away. And she was the queen, able to move in all directions, relentless in her pursuit, always able to find my weakest spots” (Tan 199). She feels as if her mother is purposely trying to pick her apart. Waverly wants to be able to be in control or in charge but at the same time seeks her mother's approval. This can be seen when she tries to make her fiance, Rich, look go so that Lindo will like him because she is afraid of what she will say about him. The author writes “And even if I recognized her strategy, her sneak attack, I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections” (Tan 191). She wants to believe that she doesn’t need her mother's approval but deep down she does. Waverly wants to be confident in herself but lost that at a young. Waverly feels as if her mother is ashamed of her and the …show more content…
Lindo was very proud of her daughters success and often took it upon herself to show off to others. Waverly states “Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn play chess?” (Tan 101). Lindos way of showing how proud she was, was taking wrongly by her daughter but this was her way of showing support. When Waverly said this her mother began to believe that her daughter was ashamed of her. Both mother and daughter beicker with one another but neither will say anything about how they really